I hit the oceanfront again last week. Unlike my previous excursion, the water was calm due to a north wind, and any bait that was around was very visible.
Upon arriving at the beach, I scanned the surfline. What I saw looked like a thick black line that paralleled the shore. It was all bait, massive numbers of bay anchovies, that seemed as wide as a two lane road. In addition, there were dark patches of bait here and there way out that were about the size of a school gym. The bait way out was being attacked sporadically by roving pods of bluefish. Sometimes you’d see several schools of blues working in different locations.
In my previous post, I told about the millions of bluefish I found two days ago. Well, big numbers of blues were still around yesterday as my son, Jon, and I landed forty of them on poppers. But, there are increasing numbers of other fish, all being lured close to shore by the bait. In places the bottom seems to be paved with undersized fluke. We landed twenty of those on bucktail jigs when the blues weren’t breaking. At one point Jon landed fluke on six casts in a row. We also caught good numbers of sea robins while fishing for fluke. I also did see several keeper bass tear through bait schools that were almost at my feet. The stripers, though, seemed to be loners and not interested in hitting anything as they keyed on this tiny half-inch to an inch baitfish.
So, we are in a rare dead of summer glut of fish right now. While stripers continue to be in short supply, bluefish and fluke are around in astronomical numbers. So, I am taking what’s available and having a great time with it!
Photos of Glut of Bait Attracting All Sorts of Fish to RI Shore
